DoD Office of Strategic Capital is high risk, the kind of risk no investors would fund.
Investors scrutinize pitch decks and then do hard company due diligence which frequently falls through. And conversations die-off with no obligation to provide feedback, unlike in government. And investors will not fund true R&D. They fund scale.
None of these agencies fund high-risk grants. I don't think there is such a thing. What you're talking about is the difficult-to-quantify relationship between a define advance in knowledge, and possible commercial applications.
ARPA-E is high risk.
ARPA-H is high risk.
Much of NSF is high risk, like NSF Engines, NSF Future Manufacturing, NSF Convergence Accelerators.
DoD SBIR/STTR is high risk. (Confirm it for yourself and look at this month's topics in https://www.dodsbirsttr.mil/topics-app/.)
AFWERX is high risk.
SpaceWERX is high risk.
DIU is high risk.
NASA SBIR is high risk.
NASA NIAC is ultra-high risk.
DoD Office of Strategic Capital is high risk, the kind of risk no investors would fund.
Investors scrutinize pitch decks and then do hard company due diligence which frequently falls through. And conversations die-off with no obligation to provide feedback, unlike in government. And investors will not fund true R&D. They fund scale.
So no, your statement does not hold.